


you're the last best thing i've got going

by anatomied



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 21:07:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12992535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatomied/pseuds/anatomied
Summary: Ray Narvaez, Jr. signs up for theater in his senior year half as a joke, and half to get that useless fine arts credit out of the way. Unfortunately, it also puts him approximately one meter away from Ryan Haywood, resident overachiever (meaning: local pretty boy, actual model, theater lead, coding nerd, knife aficionado, and AP student all in one) for an hour every day.That, as it turns out, is not a joke in the slightest.





	you're the last best thing i've got going

**Author's Note:**

> I thought this was going to be six thousand words, and it ended up being double that. I might revisit this with a short few follow-up pieces looking at Michael and Lindsay in more depth or Ray and Ryan afterwards. Not going to make this into a series just yet, but if this randomly joins a series, it's because I've got some definitely shorter pieces in the works.
> 
> Much love and credit to @juggey on tumblr (@pensrcool on ao3, I believe) for reigniting my love for high school AUs, workshopping some of this with me, and revealing [this](https://78.media.tumblr.com/2d074a33fb6f95b2e5d7ed746aa78c41/tumblr_inline_p09q5qo7mY1rxvcvj_500.jpg/) amazing comparison of teenage Ryan vs. teenage Ray.

Michael peers up from the slightly folded copy of Ray’s schedule, holding it a few inches away from his face as if unable to read it. He tilts it a few degrees closer to the light, squinting at the black ink. “Theater?” he repeats, incredulous. “Dude, _why_?” Ray shrugs idly, directing his own gaze back down to the screen of his DS. He can feel Michael’s eyes fixed on him, trying to pick up on the emotional tics that are only visible to those who have known Ray for years now. Ray, meanwhile, schools his expression into its blankest possible form (its final form, one might say) and jabs viciously at the screen with his stylus.

Finally, Michael slides the schedule back over to him with a shit-eating grin. “God,” he says, “you have it so fucking bad for Ryan. Holy shit.”

Ray’s grip slips slightly on the stylus and the tip slides across the screen, selecting eight additional units and ending his turn. “I do fucking not,” he snaps. “I just need to get the fine arts credit or whatever so I can get out of this shithole.” He really does not want to see Michael’s expression, which means he has to watch as his entire formation for this battle just collapses thanks to one errant swipe.

In the corner of the cafeteria, someone runs their stupid rolling backpack right into the wall to avoid tripping one of the football players, chipping the drywall. The reverberation runs all the way up the wall, and Ray’s eyes snap to the commotion in time to watch a loose ceiling tile fall partway out of the ceiling, showering bits of insulation right into someone’s lunch.

Shithole, indeed.

Ray’s entire goal is to scrape by - and definitely not grab too much attention with any talent or skill in particular - and get the fuck out the second the diploma’s in his hands.

——

It’s not that he has it bad for Ryan Haywood. He doesn’t, really. Ray’s never spoken to Ryan and only viewed him from afar. They shared one basic orientation class in his freshman year, in which Ryan sat directly in front of the teacher and Ray picked the most distant window seat possible, and then Ryan immediately rocketed out of Ray’s orbit and into the far reaches of academic space. Their trajectories could not possibly be more opposite. Hell, there was a rumor flying around recently that Ryan got a modeling contract or something, whereas Ray isn’t sure when he last had a haircut and wears whatever he can convince to peel off his desk chair in the morning.

The whole theater thing is just a happy coincidence.

Yes, Ryan’s the leading man of their school’s tiny and notoriously tight-knit theater program, which is so small that everyone is combined into one class at the end of each day. Who gives a fuck? Ray just needs the credit. He isn’t looking to intrude or upset the harmony of the thespian way or whatever.

He doesn’t even like reading Shakespeare, which he’s pretty sure instantly disqualifies him from actually being considered part of the theater program. The whole point of the course is to get the participation points and then write the single comparative essay due at the end of the semester. Ray’s already scouted out the SparkNotes like he does every year and picked out the two shortest plays he could find.

Basically, he’s fucking set, as long as things don’t get complicated. And if they do get complicated, he’s got someone to blame, whose preferred name starts with R and comes packaged with startlingly blue eyes and a light Georgia drawl that makes Ray’s heart _do things_ sometimes, like this is one of those dumb Lifetime movies his mom watches.

But he’s sure that things’ll be just fine. He has plenty of practice at distance.

——

The theater director is a short woman with a pixie cut and a dozen colorful pins on her jacket. She is unique from most of the faculty simply by virtue of being young and not having the life drained out of her yet. Ray would normally be scoping her out for more info, like if she’s the kind of teacher who takes excuses for late assignments, but he keeps finding himself looking at Ryan sitting on the opposite side of their little circle of chairs, leaning back casually. It’s hard to not look at Ryan, whose utter comfort in the room contrasts with most of the freshmen awkwardly crammed on one side of the circle plus Ray himself.

“Ray?” the director calls out, lips pursed as she goes down the roster.

Ray raises one hand as limply as possible.

She smiles gently at him. “I see you’re the only senior here who hasn’t enrolled before. Why’d you pick this course?”

“Needed the credit.” He shrugs, tucking his hands into his hoodie. “Never done this before, so, uh. You know. For the experience.”

The director adjusts her grip on the clipboard. “Well,” she says, so kind that it sort of makes Ray want to throw up, “everyone needs some unique experiences in high school. Hopefully you can find something valuable for you here.”

“Sure,” Ray agrees flatly. His tone betrays exactly what he thinks of that idea.

Something passes over Ryan’s face - the shadow of a smile.

——

Later in that first painfully awkward class, they do their first minute-long monologues. The director emphasizes that this is not for a grade - that it’s a mere benchmark of where they all are, so on, so forth. Whatever. It’s a fucking assessment. Of course they go from least to most experienced, probably to avoid scaring off all the newbies who actually give a fuck. In front of the class, Ray stares down at the paper in front of him, clears his throat, and opens his mouth.

He proceeds to read the whole monologue with the same tone he uses when asked to read aloud in class. Bored, emotionless, and so dry that a recording could probably be used to administer sleep therapy to old people.

“Thank you,” the director says primly as he trails off, her smile absolutely fucking unmoving.

“Sure,” Ray says again and slinks off towards his seat. By the time he gets to the back row, he realizes that some of the veterans must’ve moved around while he was shuffling up in the slow procession line of first-timers out to embarrass themselves. Moreover, Ryan Haywood himself has moved behind and to the left of Ray’s seat. Ray grits his teeth and slides his ass right into the same grey folding chair, tugging his DS out of his pocket the second he can. He refuses to be intimidated by a bunch of dumbasses who wear costumes and prance around on stage.

“You really don’t want to be here, huh?” Ryan Haywood muses, his tone as close as it gets to playful, and Ray thinks about the merits of just slamming his DS into his own face, breaking his nose, and saying that he has to go to the nurse.

“No,” he finally says, the syllable not as deadpan as he would like.

He can hear Ryan’s smile even if he refuses to turn back and see it. “It’s better than you’d think, you know.”

“ _S_ _ure_ ,” Ray snaps as deliberately as possible, tugging his hood up and turning Fire Emblem back on. Universal symbol of _I don’t give a fuck what you’re saying_. Better than he thinks. What absolute bullshit.

It is so, so much worse than he thought it would be.

——

“Did you seriously think that theater wouldn’t make you get up on stage and say shit?” Michael seems utterly delighted by Ray’s dejection. They’re sitting on opposite ends of Michael’s couch, all _no homo_ , and playing _Halo_ together. Ray doesn’t say a word as he snatches up a shotgun on screen, turns the corner, and promptly blasts Michael into next week. Michael curses a blue streak and raises his controller as if about to hurl it before lowering it again as he respawns.

“I don’t know,” Ray snaps, backpedaling as Michael’s newly revived character on screen charges at him, spraying assault rifle across the area. “I guess I just thought I’d be able to say _oh, fuck acting_ and I’d just have to stand around and dress up as a tree or whatever for nine months.”

“Like a fucking _baby_?” Michael nearly howls.

Ray shoves an energy sword up his avatar’s ass a second later, so there is some justice left on this earth after all.

——

For their first production, Ray ends up on booth duty. Someone (and he’ll find out who they are and rain hell on them at some point) tells the director that he plays video games, which apparently translates to _likes to push buttons_ _and pull levers_ , and so he ends up in the booth with Lindsay Tuggey. Lindsey herself is the one blessing in all of this, because she’s perfectly aware of Ray’s outlook and is one hundred percent fine with handling almost everything herself.

So during rehearsals, Lindsay says things like _third button from the left, press it when they clear out the stage_ and Ray does so. He’s basically just Lindsay’s two extra hands, and in between, he plays whatever on his DS. Along the way, he tries not to drop any hints about the way Michael talks about Lindsay, about how soft his voice gets and how his expression softens whenever he looks at her. It’s hard, really, to keep his mouth shut.

One time Michael told Ray that he gets the exact same way when he talks about Ryan.

 _That’s bullshit_ , Ray said. _I hate him and every time I see him he victimizes me personally_.

——

Setting up some of the major background props means that Ray actually has to emerge from the booth, which has rapidly become his and Lindsay’s space, and help lift things. Ray has no idea who got the idea that he can lift shit, with his spindly arms and him regularly being nearly pushed around by strong winds, but whatever. It wastes time in the day. He and another guy pick things up and move them around, other members of the program drifting in and out between rehearsing lines and scenes.

“Hey,” one of the sophomores says as the scene breaks apart and the director ushers a girl aside to coach her on lines, “Ryan - we could use some help painting some of these this weekend, if you’ve got some time. We’re thinking Saturday afternoon, one to five or something?” Ryan is the first resource whenever they need an extra hand at anything. He’s just a jack of all trades, and possibly a master of at least half of those trades too.

The guy Ray’s helping out jerks his head towards the left, and they start to rotate the prop around, shuffling slowly.

“I can’t on Saturday.” Ryan sounds genuinely remorseful. “I’ve got…” His voice trails off before there’s an audible inhale. “I’ve got a thing. A modeling thing. A shoot, I mean.” It took him about three times to actually admit it, but the reality of Ryan’s schedule drops into the room like a lead weight.

“Oh, sure,” the sophomore says, her voice perfectly accommodating as Ray’s heart threatens to burst. The fucking model rumor wasn’t a rumor. It was a God damn _truth_. “Well, I hope it goes well —”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Ray says aloud, somewhere between his usual deadpan and brimming outrage, his hands slipping from under the mass of cardboard and wood he’s supporting. The end slides out of his grip and lands with a heavy thunk right on the center of Ray’s foot.

Ryan volunteers to help Ray to the nurse.

Ray tries to deny the help, because he’s a strong tough guy who doesn’t need help, especially not from already perfect human being Ryan Haywood, and hobbles towards the door. He makes it about two feet before almost careening right into the director, who grabs him with a surprising amount of strength in her arms and props him back upright. “Haywood,” she says sternly, “help Ray to the nurse.”

They don’t talk on the way there. At least, they don’t talk to each other, because Ray spends the whole time spitting curses down at his own foot. The nurse decrees it’s not broken but merely badly bruised, and Ryan sticks around for the whole diagnosis. “Could be worse,” he offers mildly, standing in the corner of the room with his arms crossed. Ray glares at him even as the nurse stacks up some pillows and nudges his foot on top of them, leaving some ice packs atop his foot to try and numb it. Ryan leaves ten minutes later, glancing back at Ray before the door swings shut behind him. Ray lets his head flop limply back down against the pillow with a groan.

Fuck Ryan Haywood and his dumbass modeling career. Ray will see him in hell.

Hell, as it happens, turns out to be the night of the first actual play they put on.

——

In the aftermath of their first actual performance, Ray’s been on campus for twelve hours straight and he wants to die or at least sleep for about twenty years. He slips out early from the festivities afterwards and ends up behind the theater, sequestered next to a dumpster overflowing with all the spare parts from the props. He leans against the wall and exhales, his breath turning to fog in the cool air. For a while he just stands, his eyes shut, and listens to the sounds of the night around him.

The door creaks open. Ray glances over and blinks. “Oh, shit,” he says, “it’s you.”

Ryan Haywood pauses in the midst of shrugging on his coat and offers that stunning leading man smile. “Yeah,” he agrees. “It’s me.” He nudges the door closed with his foot and moves into the space between Ray and the dumpster. Ray stares out at the parking lot, using his shitty peripherals to watch as Ryan sticks his hands into his pockets and shivers a little.

The silence sits between them for a while.

“I thought,” Ray finally says slowly, “you’d be inside with everyone else. Party’s basically for you, what with you being the big important star and all.”

“Lindsay asked me to check on you. Besides, I like the quiet.”

“You like the quiet,” Ray repeats.

Ryan chuckles softly. “Don’t sound so skeptical, Ray.” Ray’s pretty sure that’s the first time Ryan’s ever said his name, and it sounds vaguely disappointed. Off to a great fucking start here. Ray squeezes his fingers tighter against the inside of his pockets and doesn’t say anything at all. He kind of wants to pull his beanie so far down that it covers up his face, and then keep pulling it until it just swallows up his whole body.

God. He is such a complete fuckup.

His brain’s struggling for something to say, so eventually he just blurts out the overwhelming feeling he gets whenever he looks at Ryan. “You know, you don’t make any fucking sense.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

Ray draws a hand out of his pocket to wave a hand at Ryan in general, a centimeter away from smacking him in the jaw. “You - You just. You’re a theater nerd, but you’re also going to that big fucking computer science thing in February, and you’re in a billion AP classes or whatever, and I’m just wondering how you’re not dead. If it turns out you’re into Satanic shit or something and you’ve made yourself immortal to do all this, tell me, because I want fucking _in_ on that.”

Christ. Ray just wants to throw himself into the dumpster, despite all the sharp bits of wood and the probably tetanus-carrying nails in there.

Unfortunately, Ryan is directly in his path to a swift death by a billion puncture wounds. And he’s _laughing_ , which is somehow worse. “I didn’t realize you were paying so much attention to me and my life,” he says once he calms down from nearly hysterical laughter. His voice hits a surprising pitch when he laughs, a few degrees higher than one might think.

Ray immediately says, “I’m not.” He schools himself into the flattest tone possible.

“ _Sure_ ,” Ryan says, his tone imitating Ray’s during that first awkward conversation in that semicircle of creaky grey chairs. And Ray really hates that his… sworn enemy, as he’s decided to call Ryan here, is a fucking thespian, because he manages to hit the perfectly dismissive tone that Ray has spent years workshopping.

It’s one thing for Ryan to steal his attention and shit. It’s another thing for Ryan to steal his _gimmick_.

He’s going to kill Lindsay for sending Ryan, of all people, out here to check on him. Michael’s here to see her - why not send him instead of Haywood? Ray pushes himself off of the wall and takes a few steps forward towards the chain link fence separating them from the rest of the world. Footsteps follow him. Ray huffs out a low breath and turns back towards the theater door. Ryan’s taken a few steps forward, keeping a respectful distance between them.

Ryan’s tone is genuinely curious. “I’m actually not sure what I’ve done to piss you off so badly, Ray.”

 _Look in a fucking mirror_ , Ray nearly says. Instead he squares his shoulders and says, “Better do some fucking soul searching, then.”

Stepping back inside the theater lets the warmth of the indoors cut through him. It’s a good kind of hurt.

——

Ryan ends up driving him home forty-five minutes later, because Lindsay and Michael are too busy making out in the back of Michael’s car. Ray trails a few feet behind Ryan and slams his hand against Michael’s back window as they go by, middle finger resolutely raised. Even through the glass and metal, he can hear Michael’s voice go _oh, fuck, Ray, sorry_. Yeah. That’s fucking right, asshole.

He tries to get Ryan to drop him off a block away from the complex. He doesn’t want to admit that he and his mom live in a tiny two bedroom apartment, that his life is that fucking sad. He’s sure Ryan lives in a house - maybe even a two story house. But Ryan insists, gentle and stubborn, and Ray directs him down the appropriate series of streets, gnawing on his lip the whole time.

“Stop here,” he says.

Ryan peers out the windshield. “Here?” he asks, staring up at the mostly dark array of apartments.

“Yup,” Ray almost snarls, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Got something to say about it?” It’s defensive, sure, but he’s heard plenty of bullshit about how he lives before. He pauses, about to nudge the passenger door open.

Ryan’s fingers drum on the steering wheel. “Nah,” he says. “Why would I? Not my place to judge shit.” Instead he offers Ray a slightly less stunning smile, something tired creeping in around the edges. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

Something of Ray’s persona cracks around the edges in response to Ryan’s own exhaustion. “Yeah,” he says softly, “see you.” Then Ray slips out of the car and tugs his bag out along with him, tossing it over his shoulder as he begins the climb up the stairs.

——

“That’s not how you throw a knife.” Ryan’s voice cuts through the general pandemonium of rehearsal.

They’re one month out from their second production - and Ryan isn’t starring in this one because they apparently have to give other people chances. Ray personally thinks that choice is going to weaken the absolute shit out of the production, but whatever. He’s not the director. But Ryan still finds odd little ways to take the spotlight.

Their new lead actor, some foreign exchange student one year younger than them named Gavin, frowns. “What?” Ray’s not that familiar with him. He sees him hanging out with Michael sometimes, but that’s about the extent of their interactions.

Ryan shakes his head and climbs back up onto the stage. “Is it balanced?”

“Um,” Gavin says slowly, “I don’t know?” Ray leans forward from his seat in the front row, DS forgotten in his lap.

Ryan purses his lips and takes the knife. He sets the middle of the knife on his index finger and holds out his hand flat. The knife tumbles immediately, clattering against the floor. Ryan shakes his head and reaches down to pick it up. “See, it’s not balanced. It’s heavier towards the hilt, which makes sense for this kind of knife.”

“... Alright.” Gavin isn’t evidently getting any of this. Frankly, neither is Ray.

“So when you throw it, it’s going to tumble like this.” Ryan demonstrates, turning the knife gently. “You have to counter the rotation. You’ve got to throw it like this.” He tilts the knife just slightly and gestures, not letting the knife fly from his fingers just yet.

Gavin frowns. “Well, why don’t you do it, then?” He steps back from Ryan’s path towards the target.

Ryan swivels neatly on his heel and throws. He puts his whole arm into it and the knife embeds into the wooden pallet they’ve been using as a target. It sticks there, wavering slightly. The entire room freezes. Ryan, meanwhile, with all the grace of someone who knows exactly how to handle the spotlight, simply turns and walks right off stage without looking back. Ray’s jaw must be somewhere near the center of the earth at this point.

A freshman claps a little. He slows and then stops when he realizes no one else is joining in.

“Bollocks,” Gavin mumbles. He pulls the knife out of the pallet and backs up, starting to try and imitate Ryan’s form.

“Holy shit,” Ray says to himself, and walks right outside to call Michael.

——

“Ryan Haywood isn’t a murderer, Ray,” Michael says, his voice tinny and distant on the phone. “So what, he knows how to throw knives? He’s from Georgia. Fucking toddlers probably learn to throw knives and make sweet tea down there. Guy’s never even been in a fight before, and I would know.” It’s true. Michael is the first into a fight and the last out, so he would know if Ryan was the type to start brawls.

And Ray knows that, but his mouth is moving without his brain. His brain is more concerned with remembering the line of Ryan’s body throwing that knife. “Yeah, but, like, he could murder me, Michael. He could throw a fucking knife into my head and just. Boom. Done. Like that. Life’s over.”

“You barely have a fucking life,” Michael tells him. “Alright. I have to go, so if you’re that worried, just don’t piss him off. You’ll be fine. Besides, I heard he likes you.”

“You heard _what_?” Ray nearly shouts, and the only response is the dial tone as Michael hangs up on him.

Ray’s really going to kill him for real this time.

——

That Wednesday, Ryan sits next to him as they watch the rest of the class go through warmups. Ryan’s leaving for the latter half of this week to go be a huge computer science nerd in an actual competition, so there’s not much for him to do besides sit around and look pretty. Unfortunately, he’s good at that too, what with being an actual real life model, and he seems to be insisting on looking distractingly pretty right next to Ray. “Figured I should let you know,” he says idly, ”that the front of the skull’s a little over six millimeters thick, and knives almost never land perfectly perpendicular to what they hit, so it’d be pretty hard to get a knife through the front of your skull and kill you.”

“Um,” Ray responds.

Ryan grins wickedly. “Sorry. Michael mentioned that you were worried about me killing you like that. I swear not to use a knife for evil, especially not on you.”

“Haha. Okay.” Ray’s voice has never sounded so sluggish before in his whole life. It sounds like Ryan’s making a joke. All the signs are there. So Ray gathers his nerves. “Not denying having done evil with it before though.”

Ryan stretches. Ray stares at his arms for a moment, distracted from his vendetta.

“I mean,” Ryan says with a soft groan, “would you believe me if I said I hadn’t?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Ray demands. Ryan smirks and stands, heading up towards the stage like nothing happened. He’s gone into the dimly lit backstage before Ray can chase after him. The bastard’s in AP Physics, not Biology.

Why the _fuck_ does he know how thick the skull is?

——

After the final run of their second production, Ray goes out with the rest of the program to a local diner. He’s mostly in it for free food, as their director insists that everything’s on her, just this once. It’s fun - boisterous, but the diner’s staff seem to not care as long as someone pays at the end of it all. Eventually people peel off for the night, driving off on their own or in pairs, and it slowly boils down to just Ryan and Ray sitting out in the parking lot

Ryan’s been driving Ray home more and more often. Michael’s too busy with Lindsay at this point, and Ray isn’t exactly looking forward to the depressing walk home. So he accepts Ryan’s offer more often than not. Ryan sits on the curb with a diet Coke, knocking the can slowly against his knee.

Ray hunches his shoulders and focuses out towards the nearly empty street.

“I think I might be playing Macbeth in the spring,” Ryan says idly. “We’re trying to decide between Macbeth and Hamlet, but Macbeth is more interesting to me. Hamlet’s great and all, but we might as well use my knife skills for something here before I graduate.” He knocks his shoulder gently against Ray, and Ray briefly considers just sliding right onto the asphalt and waiting for a car to hit him.

“Nice,” Ray agrees. He has no idea which one of those plays is which.

He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him, but he refuses to give into the very pretty bait. But Ray’s entire body stiffens when Ryan reaches over and brushes a few strands of hair out of his eyes. “Doesn’t this ever annoy you?” he asks, audibly amused.

“What?”

“Your hair’s always in your eyes. I don’t know how you see anything.”

“Eyes as the windows to the soul or whatever, huh?”

Ryan’s mouth is tilted upwards slightly, all good humor. “Actually, sometimes I’m not sure that you have eyes.”

Ray reaches up and brushes his bangs out of his face a little more. It’s a losing proposition, but there’s no wind going, so the arrangement will stay as directed for a bit. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not some weird gross mutant.”

The way Ryan is looking at him is odd, like he’s trying to take everything in at once. He leans back and the smile only grows by a few degrees, crinkling the corners of his eyes. It gentles the sharper lines of his face. “Good. I was wondering how you functioned up in the booth with Lindsay shouting orders at you if you couldn’t see what the fuck you were doing.”

“Raw talent, baby,” Ray mutters. He regrets it instantly, even if he was only calling Ryan _baby_ as a joke. A sneaky glance over at Ryan betrays no change in expression, so maybe he got lucky and he wasn’t paying attention. The best solution is just to forge onwards. “Besides, Lindsay doesn’t yell at me.”

“Oh, she absolutely does yell at you.” Ryan tips back the diet Coke for a moment. Ray’s not sure how Ryan’s alive still, because all he’s ever seen him drink is diet Coke and sometimes some water. “I guess being around Michael all the time has permanently damaged your hearing, or at least your sense of when someone’s yelling or not. I don’t blame you. He’d do that to anyone.”

“Hey,” Ray grumbles, “fuck you.” A few strands of hair tumble back into his eyes. He’s so used to it now that it doesn’t even really register as a change.

Ryan watches him for a moment. Ray shoves his hands back into his hoodie pockets in some terribly self-conscious move. It’s odd to just sit here with Ryan without the rumble of his car’s engine between them to fill the space. He almost wishes they were in the school theater, just so that something else was happening. Instead, Ray’s focused on everything - on the soft even sound of Ryan’s breathing, on how close their knees are. If either of them moved over maybe an inch or two, they’d be touching.

But here they are, with an infinite two inches of space between them.

Ray tugs at the strings of his hoodie a little. It’s one of his few visible nervous tics, something he does when his brain is moving too fast and he needs some kind of action to force himself to slow down.

“Okay,” Ryan says slowly. “I have to ask. Do you _actually_ hate me? Because I can’t fucking tell, and it’s really fucking confusing.”

“Guess,” Ray replies, because there’s no way Ryan can be this stupid.

Ryan shakes his head. “I really don’t know, Ray. Swear to God.”

Holy shit. Ryan “Actual Perfect Human” Haywood is an idiot after all. It almost makes Ray feel a bit better that Ryan’s genuinely bad at something. At the same time, he also feels a little guilty, because he really has spent years making himself impossible to read. It’s an odd mix of triumph and loss all at once.

Instead, Ray inhales as hard as possible. “You like _Halo_?” he asks. It’s a roundabout answer that isn’t really an answer at all, but if Ryan’s learned anything from those six AP classes he’s taking this year, it’s how to read between the God damn lines.

Ryan blinks over at him. “I do,” he says, the syllables slow and drawn out.

“How about this,” Ray says. “You come over to my place this weekend. My mom’ll be glad to know I’m at least on friendly terms with one other person on Earth besides Michael, and I get to show you something that I bet I can kick your ass at.”

“Really?” There’s the beginnings of a competitive light at the back of Ryan’s eyes. “You’re that good?”

Ray shrugs. “See, unlike you, I choose to specialize in one skill.”

“Alright,” Ryan chuckles. “Two o’clock on Sunday sound good?”

With a flourish, Ray draws his arms out from his hoodie. “I’m not exactly the type with a busy schedule. So, sure. Two o’clock on Sunday.”

They shake on it.

Two days later, Ray absolutely stomps Ryan in _Halo_. Admittedly, it’s not a perfect blowout. Ryan’s better than he lets on, with a good reaction time and a penchant for steady aiming under pressure that sends Ray’s ragdoll of a body spinning across the screen more than once. _Shit_ , Ray thinks, his grip relaxing by a few degrees on the controller as he waits to respawn, _he’s meeting all of my fucking standards_. His standards, admittedly, are probably lower than most, but still.

Even his mom likes Ryan. She spends a good twenty minutes when he first comes in fawning over him, making sure they’re both alright, and consistently offering to bring Ryan another diet Coke. Ryan responds to it all with this kind of demure Southern charm, very _yes, ma’am_ and _no, ma’am_. It’s a tone Ray’s only ever heard around his mother and a few administrators at school.

 _The kind of guy you can bring home to your parents_ , Ray thinks, half-hysterical, and the feeling rises to his throat in a short bark of laughter when Ryan runs him through with an energy sword.

“You good?” Ryan says. A hint of the Georgia accent really comes through when he’s too focused or too relaxed. It slurs his syllables together just a little.

“Yeah,” Ray says, genuine for once in his life. “Yeah, I’m good.”

——

“Just ask him out,” Lindsay tells him in the booth, “and also, stop pressing that button with your elbow. You’re going to short out the light in the back.”

Ray jerks back from the controls. He’s been distracted watching Ryan on stage, rehearsing as Macbeth. It’s hard to not be distracted, really. He thought Ryan was good earlier in the year, during that first production. But here, he really comes into his own - practically eating up the stage with the amount of power he can throw behind his voice when he really wants to. It’s a different version of Ryan - not the theater nerd or the computer science geek or even the guy playing video games on Ray’s couch. It is unique to this venue alone.

“What do you mean,” Ray demands faintly, “ _ask him out_? The fuck does that mean, Lindsay?”

“I mean,” Lindsay says, scooting her chair a few inches closer to his, “watching you pine at Ryan through a sheet of glass even as he talks about like, guilt and murder —”

“Oh, so that’s what he’s talking about.”

“— is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen, hands down. So get over yourself and ask him out on a fucking date. He’s not going to do it. He’s barely got enough time to eat and sleep. So take some fucking initiative.” She gently knocks Ray upside the head and points at the controls. “Green over there. Smack it.”

Ray follows orders. The lighting shifts by a few degrees and Lindsay hums to herself, seemingly satisfied.

“What the fuck do you even do on a date?” Ray demands, pushing himself back from the panel. “Like, where would I take him? I can’t afford anywhere fucking impressive.”

“Figure it out,” Lindsay says, merciless. “Plus, if you two don’t kiss by the time graduation rolls around, I lose fifty bucks to Michael, and I will get my fifty bucks back from you, because now I know it’s your fault for sure.”

“You bet on us _kissing_?” Ray asks, incredulous. He can’t believe this. He can’t believe his months-long personal crisis now has monetary value to his best friend and that best friend’s girlfriend. Not to mention said girlfriend is also basically his _coworker_ , which makes this whole situation so much worse.

Lindsay shrugs. “Hey, if you could fucking astral project and see the way you look at Ryan’s mouth when he talks, you’d throw fifty down on it too.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Ray shoves himself all the way back from the control panel. “We’re not - Ryan’s never even implied —”

Lindsay gives him the fondest look possible. “God, Ray,” she says, “you absolute fucking idiot.”

On stage, Ryan’s going about fake stabbing the shit out of another actor. Ray has no idea what’s happening any more, with any of it. With what’s on stage or with himself or with any of it. He watches as Ryan staggers back, sudden and breathing hard, and drops the knife to the floor, staring down at his bloody hands.

Maybe he is an idiot. Lindsay reaches past him and gently pulls a lever slowly, dimming the lights steadily down to nothing. Then she cranks it back up as the scene ends and Ryan grins up at the booth, relaxed as if he wasn’t playing pretend at murder a mere twenty seconds ago. He somehow manages to look directly at Ray despite there being little to no chance of Ray being visible at this angle.

Ryan’s a fucking mutant after all. That’s the only explanation for all this.

“Creepy son of a bitch,” Ray snarls to himself. Lindsay gives him a pitying look as rehearsal starts up again in earnest.

——

Ryan likes showtunes, but somehow manages to fuck up the lyrics every time. Ryan is absolutely fucking _disgusting_ at playing Quake, of all things, which is an ancient game for old guys. Ryan’s flubs are genuine and real, and he can fuck up simple words while managing words like _cerebellum_ and anything by Shakespeare like it’s second nature. Ryan fucking loves space and will take any opportunity he can to talk about it, which explains him being enrolled in AP Physics. Ryan likes to read fantasy books, of all things, and adores dogs.

Ray tells Michael about all this shit, which barely fits together into a person all on its own. Michael sits through it all patiently, sitting on the other end of the couch as they play co-op in the newest Call of Duty. “It doesn’t make sense,” Ray finally concludes, hammering the buttons along with a quicktime event.

“Yeah,” Michael agrees, “Ryan’s fucking weird.”

“He’s not _that_ weird,” Ray automatically snaps, some strange defensive quality climbing into his tone and making itself comfortable there. It isn’t even intentional. He’s not used to having to defend Ryan from much. Most people know him through some elective or at least through word of mouth, and people talking shit about him generally get shut down by someone else. It’s kind of a great way to reinforce a reputation, all things considered.

Michael gives him a pitying look that somehow shares a lot with Lindsay’s equally pitying look. “You basically just called him weird, dude. But I get it. Got to defend the honor of your boytoy.”

“He’s not my… boytoy.” Ray’s tone fluctuates horribly around the term, his voice hiking itself up into a strangled squeak.

“Not yet,” Michael says.

Ray squeezes the triggers of his controller so hard that the plastic creaks. “I’m going to fucking stab you in the eye,” he says flatly.

He can _hear_ the fact that Michael’s raising an eyebrow. “Stealing your lines from Ryan, huh?” Shit. He’s right. Ryan said that outside of rehearsals on Thursday to Gavin as Michael, Lindsay, and Ray had gathered off to the side. Ray slides down a little further on his couch, glasses already slipping down his nose, and stares at the screen. He and Michael sit in silence as they mow down a few more waves of enemies, Ray trying to focus on anything but the dumb shit that comes out of Michael’s mouth every time he opens it.

Finally, he can’t take it any more. “It was a good line,” he mutters, and Michael bursts into laughter so loud and raucous that his downstairs neighbors are probably going to file a complaint.

——

Their final project as the year begins to wind down towards its end is to put together a series of ten minute plays instead of one major production. They get to choose who they want to work with. This creates a litany of jobs: who controls the booth, which means Ray and Lindsay are doing their jobs exactly the same as always, who acts, who directs, who writes - or who deals with the hassle of getting production rights, if no one feels like writing - and it’s chaos. Ray hates it.

The larger productions are easier. There is a process that is discernible and practiced.

This is not that. He likes chaos in certain forms, in the sprawling open world of a video game or among friends. This is pure pandemonium, filtered through scripts and shouting at each other. He and Lindsey perch at the back of the rows of seats, their shared job mostly obsolete until actual rehearsals start. Lindsay gets up at one point, muttering _bathroom_ as she heads towards the back of the theater. Ray shrugs and props his feet up against the chair in front of him, stretching out.

Not ten seconds after the back door swings shut behind Lindsay, another presence shuffles into her vacated seat. Ray glances over and blinks.

Ryan has taken up the space. The two of them merely sit for a few moments before Ryan looks over at him. “Been getting everyone together. Jack and Geoff together on props, Barbara as the female lead opposite me. Miles is on writing.” It sounds like a dream team, all the best in their senior year getting together to go out with something extravagant.

“Lindsay’s in the bathroom,” Ray says automatically, “but I’m sure she’ll say yes when she comes back, dude.”

“I wasn’t going to ask Lindsay.”

“... What?”

Ryan looks singularly amused. “Actually, I was wondering if you would do lights and sound for us.”

This doesn’t make any sense. In the two person pecking order here, Lindsay is by far and away the more experienced technician. Ray, throughout the year, has moved up from merely being Lindsay’s extra hands to being able to hold his own for a night or so when she caught the flu during _Macbeth_ , but this is not the same thing. Ray stares at Ryan for a long moment, trying to read some kind of joke in his expression. There’s nothing there. No punchline. Only a gently earnest look, that familiar one Ryan gives people when he isn’t joking in the slightest.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Ray says anyway, just to try and coax a reaction out.

Ryan shakes his head. “When Lindsay was sick during _Macbeth_ , I paid attention to what you did with the lighting. And a lot of it was the same, but there were some differences that I liked. Lindsay is very… by the book, which makes sense. You’ve never read the fucking book, I’d assume, so you don’t have any of the disadvantages that come from that. And I don’t know if that was just you making genuine mistakes or inspired choices, but there were some things I liked up there on stage.”

“Oh,” Ray says, soft and strangled.

Lindsay’s voice drifts from the end of the row. “You taking my seat now, Ryan?”

Ryan gets up gracefully. Ray brings his legs back down so Ryan can slip past, allowing Lindsay to fill the space again. “I’ll text you with the details.”

“You don’t have my number,” Ray calls down the row, starting to stand.

Ryan waves it away. “I’ll just ask Lindsay later. Don’t worry about it.”

Shit. By the time Ray flops back down into the seat with a huff, he can feel Lindsay watching him with the smuggest possible look. He doesn’t even try to spar. Instead, he slides down further in his seat and presses his chin against his chest, watching as the rest of the theater goes about slowly pulling itself together.

——

He and Ryan end up in the auditorium a week and a half later, sitting up against a wall and talking about lighting as they pore over Miles’s script. It’s definitely something - a drama with very little comedy to be found, except comedy so dark that it probably counts as a hazardous substance. The core of it is Ryan and Barbara as spies or criminals of some variety, guns pointed at each other in a vicious standoff. There’s a lot of talking over each other. It gets to the point that Ray’s mind just kind of shorts out looking at these two massive columns of dialogue, back and forth, overlapping and escalating. There’s more profanity in one page than in the rest of their productions all year combined, and Miles scribbled a note in the top right corner that says ‘dear ryan please make the fight choreo look sexy, it’s the only way’ in frantic letters.

Ray kind of loves it. It’s dark and violent and faintly humorous.

Ryan frowns down at his notebook. “Memorizing these is going to be a bitch,” he murmurs, tracing along some of his lines with his index finger.

“Suck it up, motherfucker,” Ray offers, which draws a wry little laugh out of Ryan’s throat.

Ryan flips a little further through his notebook. “I was bored in English and wrote some shit down somewhere here, hold on.” Ray leans back and watches the pages flip by. It’s mostly Ryan’s familiar handwriting, scrawled in messier and messier as the notebook goes on. There is something endearing in knowing that Ryan’s handwriting also gets exponentially worse as the year goes on. Ray’s handwriting is never good, but there’s a definite downgrade over time. He stretches his legs out and knocks his Converse together idly.

Something catches his eye. Ray sticks his hand right into the notebook, risking several vicious paper cuts in order to stop him from flipping more pages.

Ryan stares down at his notebook. “What?”

Ray starts determinedly going backwards. “What the fuck was that?”

“What was what?” Ryan gives him an amused look, hands awkwardly holding his notebook up flatly as Ray continues to flip through pages.

“That,” Ray snaps, and jabs his finger down at the margins of one page. On the page itself, there’s just a whole array of English notes, some messy outline for an essay. However, in the margins, someone has doodled a figure. It takes the dumb fucking symbol on the headband for him to figure out exactly what it is, and he inhales so hard he can feel the air scrape brutally along his throat.

Right as Ryan mutters _oh, shit_ as soft as possible, a plea to gods that are definitely not fucking present today, Ray shouts into the dead silence of the auditorium: “You’re a fucking _weeb_?” His voice echoes and bounces off of the rafters, reverberating around the room and probably out of the open door across from them.

“I mean,” Ryan begins, and that’s precisely how far Ray lets him get.

He jabs a finger viciously at Ryan’s chest. “Cool guy Macbeth over here,” he says, “watches fucking _Naruto_ and like - what else, let me see the fucking notebook —”

This leads into a five minute battle over the notebook, Ryan instantly shutting it and drawing it close to himself almost like a shield as Ray snatches the other end and begins to pull. They yank back and forth for a second, Ryan saying something like _so I watched an anime once, what’s the big deal, huh, just move the fuck on_ as Ray gives his biggest shit-eating grin and says _you drew Boruto’s fucking dad in your notebook like a baby so you can’t tell me what to do ever again_.

“It’s supposedly actually Bolt,” Ryan mumbles, the words dripping from the corner of his mouth as he finally yanks the notebook back and shoves it into his bag. He is desperately avoiding eye contact, his words hastily shoved together and almost slurred.

Ray’s jaw moves up and down for a second, forming the syllables of whatever the fuck he was even saying before but with no air pushing up. “Did you say,” he whispers, leaning closer, “did you fucking say _Bort_?”

“No.” Ryan buries his face in his hands for a moment, sighing so hard that his shoulders fall. “No, I didn’t, God damn it. Fuck you.”

“ _Bort_ ,” Ray cackles, “ _Bort_ , oh my God. You totally care so much. Going to name your kid after him too? _Bort Haywood_.”

“Gavin suggested I name my first son Pubert last week, so really, could it get any worse?” Ryan has never more transparently tried to distract from his own fuck-up. Sure, Gavin’s an awesome scapegoat for just about everything, and Ray likes to rag on him just as much as the rest of the theater class does, but come on. This is too ripe for comedy.

“Oh, it could,” Ray says, grinning. “Michael’s going to lose his shit when I tell him.”

Update: Ryan’s blush reaches his fucking ears. It’s kind of adorable.

“You’re an asshole,” Ryan mutters as he picks up his bag, throwing it over one shoulder. Ray laughs again, loud and genuine, and starts to follow.

——

The lighting and blocking gets done. Ryan starts to find Ray and Michael in the cafeteria so that Ray is now sandwiched between his best friend and his mortal enemy at lunch, just to talk shop or whatever. There is a dedication and a focus to Ryan that Ray hasn’t quite seen before. He has a feeling he knows what this is about - that this is Ryan’s last hurrah before he leaves the school, and he wants to do it right. He mentioned that a few times to the group as a whole, Ray awkwardly in the back on his DS: _I want to do this right_.

He mutters it again, scribbling another note on the ragged copy of the script they’ve been using. The sickly lighting bleaches the paper out.

“You need to stop fucking saying that,” Ray tells him, “because it’s going to go wrong. Karma’s a bitch, y’know.”

“Yeah, stop being an overachiever, Ryan,” Michael agrees, jabbing his fork into the sad little mound of defrosted peas on his Styrofoam tray. “It makes the rest of us poor fucks look bad.”

“We’re working as a team,” Ray tells him, trying to keep the corner of his mouth from twitching up, “and you, of all people, should know about the power of friendship from all those animes you watch.”

Michael’s fork clatters against the table. “... What?”

“I, uh,” Ryan says hastily, gathering up his notebook and pens, “I’ve got to go.” Normally Ryan isn’t eager to leave, but he just shoves everything haphazardly into his bag and heads back towards the table of theater students.

The second he’s out of earshot, Ray holds up one hand, his eyes not moving up from his DS. Michael smacks it in a sharp high-five, the sound reverberating around their little corner of the cafeteria. “I thought he was going to shit himself,” Michael chortles. “That was so fucking good. Nice one, Ray.”

“I know Ryan better than anyone else on Earth, probably.” It’s an exaggeration, but the fake confidence in Ray’s voice makes that obvious.

He actually doesn’t really know shit, and that’s part of what pisses him off so bad.

——

When Michael shows up, Ray is pacing around his room, aimless.

The door creaks open a half of an inch and Michael peers in. “You good, dude? I could hear you stomping around all the way down the fucking halwayl.” Ray gestures for him to come in. Michael does so, shutting the door behind him. “Alright,” he says, pointing at the papers scattered across Ray’s desk. “What the fuck’s all that?”

“I’ve figured it out,” Ray says.

“... Figured out what?”

“The thing,” Ray nearly hisses, and Michael blinks. Then he rolls his eyes and goes to sit on Ray’s bed, his back against the wall and his legs hanging off of the side of the bed. _The thing_ means how Ryan Haywood has managed to coalesce into a person. Ray has concocted a unified theory, one might say, of how Ryan Haywood got here to their shitty high school with a billion extra skills, a modeling contract, knife throwing, and academic excellence in all of his classes. “So we know he’s from Georgia,” Ray says, jabbing a finger down at the map on his desk, “and he wasn’t here with the rest of us until high school, which means there’s a full _fourteen years_ of unknown shit in between. So I’m thinking he came west, okay, maybe with like, a traveling theater troupe or some shit, and maybe his parents taught him about all the other shit?”

“Dude,” Michael interrupts, “maybe he just had a lot of time when he was younger and figured out he liked a whole bunch of shit. I know you immediately latched onto video games in the womb or whatever, but not everyone’s like that.”

“I don’t fucking believe that,” Ray hisses.

“Okay.” Michael sits up a little. “Something’s got to be fucking done about this, because this is the third time this month you’ve had a _who is Ryan Haywood_ meltdown.”

“We have to kill him,” Ray agrees immediately.

That's not what Michael means, yeah, but the statement stands regardless.

——

On Monday, Ryan sits down next to him in the auditorium. Some other groups are taking up the stage for rehearsals. Their group is basically done until performances start on Thursday. Everyone’s pulled that last minute miracle out of their ass. Ray actually walked down to the store Lindsay recommended and spent his own cash on colored lightbulbs (which means he can’t buy the new _Call of Duty_ yet - the things he does for this fucking elective). The props are done. Ryan already owned a suit, and Barbara decided to reuse her frankly kickass prom dress with the very high slit on the side reopened after the dress code meltdown.

So Ray’s taken up his usual spot on the floor up against the wall separating the booth from everything else. He can look up and see the soft light pouring forth from the window, familiar to him now as anything else in this school. He’s figured out that he likes to sit down here when he’s got the spare time. It separates him from the rest of the chaos in the theater, dark and almost closely contained.

A body sits down next to him. Ray glances over and can just make out the familiar line of Ryan’s jaw and his eyes in the terrible lighting. “Hey,” he says.

Ryan nods. “Hey.” He traces some pattern on the carpet slowly with his index finger. “So, Michael pulled me aside during lunch.”

“So that’s where he was,” Ray mumbles, moving through a later level of _Kid Icarus_ on the screen of his DS. The motions are more reflex at this point than anything else.

“And he talked to me about something. _Talking_ is maybe too polite a word, but I’ll stick with that.” A certain note in Ryan’s tone is trying to tug him away from the game. Ray keeps his eyes focused on the screen, pointedly ignoring the impulse. “I guess I’m an idiot for not seeing it earlier, but I really couldn’t tell whether or not you hated my fucking guts or not. Michael threatened to beat some sense into me, which as far as I know, he’s pretty good at, so I’d like to avoid getting a broken nose right before our performances.”

“Sure, sure.” Ray finally snaps the DS shut, giving up on willful distraction. “So what’s he got a stick up his ass about?”

He looks over at Ryan. Haywood’s staring at him with something in his eyes, that same look outside of the diner where Ray managed to move his bangs out of his face a little more than not at all. And in this single moment that seems to stretch infinitely, Ryan reaches over, his hand catching Ray’s jaw to keep him in place, and kisses him.

About eighteen different thoughts tumble through Ray’s head at once, ranging from _nice, though_ to _does this mean I’m gay after all_ to high-pitched manly screaming. The kiss itself is soft and - nice. Nice is such a flat word for it, but it’s just pleasant. Ray gets to ignore the carpet scratching up against his palms and the discomfort of the wall against his back. His DS is an awkward weight against his thigh, but he could not give less of a fuck right now. Ryan’s mouth is _touching his mouth_ , and he’s trying not to be a middle school dipshit about this, but it’s one thing to get a kiss from anyone. It’s another thing to be kissed by Ryan Haywood, who had one girlfriend in junior year and then seemed to limit himself from the general populace of the school entirely.

Ryan tilts his head just a little more, his grip tensing on Ray’s jaw, and Geoff’s voice drifts up the rows of seats, so far away from where Ray is that it comes off as tinny and distant. “Yo, Ryan! Where’re you at?”

Then it’s all over. Ryan draws back and immediately climbs to his feet like nothing happened, heading back down towards the stage. Ray stays stock still on the floor until Ryan’s form is gone from his limited frame of vision. He makes this weird breathy little noise, trying to figure out what to do with himself. Ryan’s mouth tastes like peppermint and this slight hint of sweetness, probably from the diet Coke that he’s about two seconds away from IV-ing into himself.

“Fuck,” Ray says aloud, his hands almost shaking as he shoves his DS into his bag just for something to do.

The director pauses halfway up the steps to his left, glancing over at him. “You alright, Ray?”

“Yeah,” Ray says shakily. “Just need to go to the bathroom.”

——

They don’t talk. And maybe that’s half Ray’s fault, with him ducking into the booth whenever he can and locking the door, that universal symbol of _do not disturb the tech guys_ , slinking away from the table whenever Ryan approaches at lunch. But it’s also half Ryan’s fault, because he gets this look on his face whenever he approaches, contemplative and worried and perfectly designed to fucking terrify Ray. He can see this being a passing interest. He can see _himself_ being a passing interest. Ryan has dozens of those, too, among everything that he’s learned how to do well. He picks those up and puts them down so quickly - comes in one week going _I know how to juggle now_ and never goes back.

Ray can see himself as one of those - a passing interest of a person, the juggling to Ryan’s relationship timeline.

He wants to say something so badly, something that burns white hot and furious in his throat whenever Ryan wanders over, looking a little lost.

He can’t force it out. It burns. It’s still on fire.

——

Ray almost fucks up four times on the ten minute play with Ryan, managing to salvage it only by pulling his focus back from Haywood in a suit. He looks good. Ray didn’t even go to prom, which is apparently the last time this suit was seen out in the wild, so it’s all new shit to him. Everything else goes by without disaster, as relative as possible. It works. It’s chaos, but it _works_. The colored bulbs look great, which is nice because he spent his own cold hard cash on those, thank you. Afterwards, as the audience begins to file out of the theater, Lindsay kicks him out of the booth. “You did good,” she tells him, jerking a thumb towards the door. “So get out of here and go grab a drink. I’ll handle cleanup.”

Ray blinks, his hands hovering over his water bottle. He picks it up and nods slowly. “Thanks. I’ll come back up and grab my bag before I actually… go.”

She nods, gathering up some stray papers and stacking them up. “I’ll leave it by the door. You grabbing a ride with Ryan?”

“Uh,” Ray says, very intelligently. “I don’t fucking know.”

“Okay. I’ll tell Michael that we might have to drive you back.” She waves a hand. “Go. Get the fuck out of here.”

He slinks backstage, snags a soda from the table of random food and shit people brought to celebrate, and heads right out the back door like usual. It’s become a ritual now, at least on the first few nights of a production, for him to end the night out here. It’s starting to warm up now, approaching summer, and Ray’s breath doesn’t turn to mist in the air. A few cars lazily take the long way around the school, peeling off of the main streets back towards home. Ray pulls his arms around himself anyway and tries to imagine a certain chill in the air.

He gets a full ten minutes to himself before the door swings open.

Hey. It’s Ryan again. He shuts the door and simply stands there.

“Hey,” Ray mutters, directing his gaze back out towards the street. Another car rushes by, hurtling down the road, tires squealing against asphalt.

Finally, he looks over at Ryan. Ryan’s good at looking heartbroken. Ray’s seen it before. This isn’t that. This is pensive and focused. “Ray,” he says. “We need to talk.”

“Cool. We’re doing that right now.” He’s trying to not come off as an asshole, but it’s just instinctive by now.

Ryan frowns. “Fucking Christ. Michael wasn’t kidding. You’re really fucking bad at talking - is it true you had a meltdown over, like, all the stuff that I know how to do?”

“No,” Ray says, quite unconvincingly.

Ryan finally moves closer, taking up the spot next to him. But Ray’s winning here, because he has a clear line straight into the dumpster. There’s even more stray wood and nails in it than last time, so he has a better chance of catching tetanus and dying than he did before. He can’t just jump in, but if he maybe moves fast enough, he can scramble inside before Ryan figures out what he’s up to.

They stand there awkwardly.

Finally, Ryan rubs the back of his neck and laughs. “We’re not very fucking good at this, are we?”

Ray shrugs. “Maybe you aren’t.”

“Neither are you.”

“Fuck off.” There’s no real venom behind it, though, with the way exhaustion cracks his voice apart into a thousand weakened pieces. “What did Michael tell you?” Now he wants to know what Michael said that pushed Ryan into abrupt action. He glances over at Ryan and sees his expression twist a little. Ryan taps a nervous rhythm against the brickwork behind him, glancing around the back of the school as if looking for an answer in the night sky.

There’s nothing there, though. Just the two of them.

He sighs. “All Michael told me was that you definitely didn’t hate me, and that if anything, you never shut up about me. He _may_ have mentioned something about thinking you had a kind of… crush on me, one might say, in the middle of all the threats. He’s good at that. And then he called you a dumbass, so.” The explanation abruptly stops.

Ray is almost relieved he found something that Ryan is genuinely bad at. “You’re really shit at this,” he says aloud, genuinely kind of excited that he’s found something, _anything_ that Ryan’s bad at.

Ryan is blushing again. He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not - that bad. I’m just not good at talking to people.”

“Bullshit. You talk to people all the time.”

“Like - _people_ , though.” Ryan sounds utterly helpless. “People that really matter.”

“So I really matter, huh?” It is taking all of Ray’s willpower here to not laugh.

“No!” Ryan shakes his head. “I mean, yeah.”

Ray tries to keep the grin off his face, but it’s evidently not working. Ryan glances over at him and immediately looks away. Doesn’t do much to save face, though, because his shoulders are starting to shake with a barely restrained laugh. Finally, the laugh bursts out of Ryan’s chest, genuine and loud. “Fuck,” he gasps, “I’m so fucking _bad_ at this.”

“You are,” Ray agrees. “To be real with you, though, it’s actually pretty fucking comforting to know that you’re not perfect at everything. I was getting kind of worried that I’d fallen in love with a fucking robot.”

“Happy to confirm I’m not a robot out to rule over humanity or something..”

“That is what a super advanced Terminator _would_ say,” Ray points out, and has to lean up just a little in order to kiss Ryan again.

They get as far as lip-on-lip contact again, Ryan’s hand sliding to tangle in Ray’s curls against the back of his head, when the door next to them slams open. Ryan’s hand goes painfully tight in Ray’s hair, his whole body stiffening as if expecting a physical blow. It is a kind of physical attack, in a way, because Lindsey and Michael pile out into the back of the school like nothing’s going on as Michael hollers something about _we’re getting out of this joint, Ray, get your ass in the car_.

Everything stops. Ryan lets go of Ray’s hair and staggers back. Ray gets about as far as opening his mouth to say something before Michael’s voice echoes around the empty parking lot. “Holy _shit_.” The syllables are extended and drawn out.

“Oh my God.” Lindsay’s voice is entirely smug. Ryan slowly rotates to face her, unfortunately meaning that Ray can only awkwardly peer over his shoulder at the two of them. She then elbows Michael in the side. “Give me my fifty bucks.” Michael rubs his ribs and mutters something to himself, digging for his wallet. Lindsay glances over at him. “Not here. C'mon. Let's go and let them, y’know, get back to it.”

Ray’s breath ghosts out of his throat, his shoulders relaxing a little. They almost instantly rise back up again, though, as Michael bellows _don’t forget to use a condom_ as the door shuts behind him and Lindsay.

“Everyone’s going to know what’s up,” Ray says slowly, “in about two seconds. Just so you know.”

“Oh, I’m aware.” Ryan turns back to face him. He looks, at most, mildly amused by what just happened, while Ray can feel a sick wave of horror settling in his gut. Ray toys again with the strings of his hoodie, gaze sliding off of Ryan’s face and towards the slightly bent streetlamp closest to their tiny corner of the school grounds.

Finally, Ray pulls himself together enough to state the obvious. “You can bow out now if you want. I wouldn’t blame you. I mean, we’re heading to college in a few months - or you are, anyway. Who knows what I’m going to be doing. And I get if you don’t want me, like, uh, dragging you down, I guess?” He doesn’t mean to sound like he fucking loathes himself, like some shitty emo band’s about to manifest in the dumpster behind him to add some musical tracking to the whole disaster, but it’s still worth saying. He shrugs, trying to play it off as a casual statement - not a big deal, nope, he doesn’t feel a damn thing about it.

Ryan stares at him. “You’re fucking with me - no, no, you aren’t. You’re serious here.”

“Dead fucking serious.”

“Wow. Okay. Where to start here?” Ryan rubs his hands together, half in a conspiratorial fashion and half because he’s genuinely starting to shiver in the cold air. “Listen, Ray. We try this thing out for a few months. We see what happens. I’m not leaving immediately after graduation. So we have some time to work it out, to see if we want to try and keep this thing long distance. Or, y’know, if we both have some money saved up and I end up in an apartment instead of a dorm - you could come with me.” He shrugs. “Job market’s shit around here. I know it doesn’t seem like we have a lot of time, and maybe we don’t, but we have enough time.”

Enough time. Not a lot, but enough.

It’s such a fucking _Ryan_ thing to say.

“I guess we do.” Ray’s voice is more than a little strangled here, but he’s certainly trying. Ryan’s fingers

“Here,” Ryan says easily, “let’s try that shit again.”

They get past the first two seconds of the kiss this time without a single interruption.

——

The next day in theater class, Ryan slips his hand into Ray’s in front of God and the entire theater program.

Michael is, as expected, delighted and snaps about four pictures of Ray turning as pale as he possibly can, which is admittedly nothing next to Ryan’s ghost white complexion. Ray just sort of squeezes Ryan’s hand until it probably goes numb, because he’s sure as fuck not going to be a coward here and back down from what’s an obvious challenge. Ryan grins over at him, that kilowatt smile brilliant as ever. Ray carefully forces himself back from panic - thinks _calm_ , thinks of steadiness - and smiles back, the expression strange and stilted. Michael can go to hell. Ray’ll just steal his phone later and delete all the photos from the entire day on principle.

At the end of the day, Ray finds himself sitting backstage on his DS while the rest of the actors rush around cleaning up everything they can. Ryan’s hands settle on the back of the chair, leaning over him. “Hey there.”

“Hey.” Ray looks up, meeting Ryan’s eyes with his own. “Ready to get out of here?”

“Yup.” Car keys dangle from Ryan’s fingers, clinking against each other. “If you are, anyway.”

Ray doesn’t actually get to reply, because Ryan proceeds to lean down the extra required number of inches in order to give him a quick kiss, light and playful. Ray laughs a little when Ryan leans back up. “That’s probably the gayest thing we’ve ever done, hands down.” Sure, it’s a two day span that they’re looking at here, but there has already been plenty of gay activity across forty-eight hours. Hell, Ray even had that moment where he looked through his phone this morning and saw some of the photos he and Ryan had taken together while fucking around in the car outside of his apartment, and his heart did this weak little jump in his chest.

“That seems like a shame,” Ryan points out as Ray stands up and stretches, snatching up his bag and tucking the DS into the front pocket. “I mean, we’ve had a full forty-eight hours dating and the gayest we’ve gotten is an upside-down kiss. We can do better than that.”

“Damn right we can,” Ray agrees, mostly joking. “I’d suck your dick in a Denny’s parking lot for fucking free, I can tell you that much.” He holds open the door for Ryan, blinking and nearly blinded in the afternoon sun.

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “We can at least go to an Ihop, Ray. Have some God damn standards.”

 _Have some God damn standards_ , Ray mouths behind him, exaggerated and as shitty as humanly possible.

They stop at Ryan’s car. Someone shouts Ryan’s name - probably Miles from the voice, so Ray pulls himself up onto the hood of the car and opens his DS all over again. There is one downside to dating Ryan that he could even see before they properly entered a relationship, and it’s that he is consistently in demand. Ray, for all of his faux impatience, really is the most easygoing person about this out of the two of them. That’s good. It works out for them.

Ray zones out, staring at the screen, until a familiar presence nudges itself in between his legs. He looks up and sees Ryan smiling at him, reaching up to brush some hair out of his eyes again. “You should get a haircut,” he says, hands resting on Ray’s knees.

“Go fuck yourself,” Ray replies, and drags the stylus across the screen again.

Ryan chuckles, hands sliding an inch or so up Ray’s thighs. They’re in the middle of the fucking high school parking lot, and Ray’s almost expecting Ryan to just climb into his lap and make out with him or something. Ray isn’t even sure he’s got the willpower at this point to say no for everyone else’s sake.

“How does it go again?” Ryan muses to himself. He smiles just slightly, body pressed against the front of his car. “Fuck, it’s been a bit since I’ve thought about this - _I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that str —_ ”

Gavin’s voice cuts through Ryan’s like the sharpest possible blade. “Just kiss him, you bloody fool —” The boy’s standing in the next row over, arms folded and looking as unimpressed as he can.

“Fool?” Ryan repeats, all warmth gone from his features in an instant. Mercurial isn’t even a good enough word for it (and that’s one word Ray learned from all these theater monologues, ha). He spins around to face Gavin, voice climbing all the way to theater levels of drama. “A _fool_? I’m going to fucking end you when I get my hands on you, you scrawny little shit.”

In order to save Gavin’s life, and not at all because he wants to, Ray hooks his hand into the back of Ryan’s collar and tugs him clumsily back. Ryan staggers back and turns to face him, blinking. His edges instantly soften, like watching a dog’s fur smooth back down after it’s thrown a fit. “How about you listen to Gavin for once?” he suggests, legs hooking against the back of Ryan’s thighs to keep him there. “I know he’s a dumbass and hard to listen to, but maybe he’s not wrong.”

Ryan squints at him. “I can’t tell if you’re calling me an idiot or not too.”

“I’m going to be calling you a huge dumbass in a second if you don’t get with the program here in five seconds.”

“Better avoid that,” Ryan decides. He leans forward to kiss him again, and Ray winds his arms around Ryan’s neck to pull him even closer.

The metal of the hood is nearly uncomfortable underneath him as it bakes in the sun, his DS burning hot against his thighs. But all of that can wait for a few minutes.

They’ve got time - again, not a lot, but perhaps just enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Dance Music" by the Mountain Goats. Small bit of Shakespeare in there is from _Much Ado About Nothing_.


End file.
